A higher plan of consciousness

On the beach at Centre Island, there was a group of people sitting nearby. I thought it was any other Sunday gathering of buddies - how wrong I was. Pretty soon, I heard the hollow thumping of a drum. And then much, much more.

They started chanting. Creepily. In a foreign language. It looked a bit cultish, and more than a bit strange because the entire group was white. And of course, the clown in the blue tank started prancing around in the middle of the circle. Finally, one of us figured out what they were going on about. It was a group practicing the Hare Krishna Mantra. Yeah, totally - a group of all white people, sitting on a beach on Centre Island, chanting an ancient, Hindu mantra.

Thanks to Wikipedia, I learned some things. These people apparently worship Krishna as the all-powerful god. I still don't quite understand the purpose of it all, but the mantra goes like this:

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare

I guess they believe that through chanting this mantra over and over, it's possible to achieve a more powerful level of consciousness. Right. Wrong skin colour guys - why are all religious fanatics caucasian? Stop embarrassing yourselves, don't you have your own religions?

Anyways, at least the sun came out. So I guess it wasn't all for nothing. This is what the beach looked like soon after: